The BIG APPLE!!!

Its the 18th and I finally arrive in New York!!

When I arrived at Grand Central Station I was in awe of how happy I was to be here!

A few stops later I was already getting out at Morgan Ave.- where my beautiful hostel was waiting for me! 'The New York Loft Hostel'- I definately recommend it :)

Although the area looked kind of dodgy in the dark the hostel itself is great, clean, modern with all the facilities needed.

The first nigth was nice and calm ( but trust me that was all about to change very soon!!). On Thursday I did a nice thorough visit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and thus fullfilled my expectations as an Art historian I think. Some new exhibitions included 'The Art of the samurai' and 'American Stories'....
I then decided to walk through Manhattan so from 80th Lafayette I walked all the way down to 14th. It was beautiful and as I arrived at Times Square, the darkness had already swallowed the day so the opportunitites for amazing pictures of all the lights were endless.
As I got home I met up with my newly found friends: the dancer, the artiest and the poet/writer.
The dancer was laready leaving but the artist, the poet and I, we all went to Brooklyn to attend a presentation by Major. We received an invitation to this event completely by chance and boy am I glad we did. It turns out that Waldemar Fydrych aka. Major (a polish man in his late 40s who was staying at our hostel) was the founder of a movement in Poland back in the 1980s. Its called the Orange Alternative and is based on the conceptof 'social surrealism'. There have been numerous events they organised, some even reached over 10 000 participants. The Orange alternative uses gnomes/dwarfs to represent them. Major even ran for the post of governor of Warsow in 2006. So it so happened that a buch of us, all having met completely randomly, were sitting in this little studio with orange hats on, an orange clay dwarf in hand and were plotting an event for the coming up Saturday on Times Square. I couldn't attend this unfortunately, as my bus for Philadelphia left at noon on Saturday but I hope I get to stay in touch as the concept intrigued me a lot.
So what are the chances of this happening? Talk about social surrealism....

The artist, the poet and I + our three dwarfs then just roamed the streets of Brooklyn for the night :) but no worries we all go into our beds at the hostel all safe and sound.

The next day the weather was beautiful so I spent about 4 hours in Central Park- walking and taking photos....
That evening I then headed to Chinatown got myself some yummy pork and duck on rice and went to eat in under the Brooklyn Bridge- definately a view worth remembering.
So that was my last day.
The next morning I managed to get up in time for breakfast for the first time in three days and packed my stuff.
I was planning on taking the dwarf with me around the world but I decided against it....so I left it him on Vernon Street- his story will continue in someone else's arms!